Review Aralon: Forge and Flame 3d RPG

I don’t play many large scale RPGs on mobile because the platform doesn’t lend itself well to the genre, but that’s not without its exceptions. Aralon: Forge and Flame for Android is a large RPG that incrementally improves over its predecessor, Aralon: Sword and Shadow, in a lot of ways, but if you’re a fan of the series or even Crescent Moon’s RPGs then you might ask yourself if it was worth the five year wait.

In some ways, I’d say yes. If you have played any of Crescent Moon’s other RPGs then you’ll be familiar with the formula, and if you played Sword and Shadow then you’ll quickly realize there aren’t a ton differences between the two. Aside from the obvious story differences, most of the new stuff are largely improvements over the last, but they’re only incremental, and after five years, you’d think there would be more to say about it.

The UI is new and improved when compared to the old and clunky UI of the previous game. It’s a lot more concise and mobile friendly. You get access to everything that you need to and it doesn't burden you with a million buttons that you don’t really need. The world and the quests also tend to guide you better. There are world markers for everything you need to do and fewer NPCs that don’t have a significant impact on the story.

That said, the world still feels as dead as it did before and there aren’t really any improvements when it comes to the combat. You’ll likely be managing your mana and cooldowns while simply standing in front of an enemy trading blows.

Aralon: Forge and Flame is definitely a fun RPG that I enjoyed my time with, but it feels like a blast from the past. Coming from old CRPGs, this feels like something I would have played back in the late 90’s, not something I’d be playing almost 20 years later.